SSL 25

The next day, Doyoon went to school clutching the straps of his backpack in his hands the entire way. He sat down at his desk with his neck hunched, like an animal that did not know when it would be attacked, and endured the twisting pain in his stomach. But nothing happened all morning. All that happened was Jaehyun coming over to say hello right after the morning homeroom. It was only when lunchtime was almost over that two boys came over and stood with their hands on his desk.

“Hey.”

What was bound to happen has happened. Doyoon accepted it.

Because the wait had been long, he felt his mind become rather calm. Just then, a strange piece of paper was pushed forward from the corner of his desk. It was a math test paper with the words ‘OO Academy/6th Mock Final Exam’ printed in the top corner.

“Solve this.”

“……”

“Solve it and we’ll go. We’ll get lost right away. For real.”

A finger pointed to a problem number.

“Just solve this one, number 17.”

Doyoon hesitated. It was an unexpected request.

Should I ignore them? But the boys were pressing the test paper firmly on top of Doyoon’s Korean language error-correction notebook, so it was difficult for him to study any further anyway. Doyoon picked up his mechanical pencil and wrote the answer to problem number 17. He couldn’t bring himself to write on someone else’s test paper, so he wrote it in the margin of his own notebook and pointed to it.

“……This.”

“Whoa……”

“Hey, what about the solution process?”

Do I have to write that too? Doyoon thought.

It was a short-answer question, not a descriptive one, so I just wrote the answer. Doyoon did not like writing out the solution process. Just like having to explain his thoughts in words, writing out the process was also difficult. Sometimes, high-point problems came out as descriptive questions, so he had no choice but to practice, and if he had to compare, writing math solutions was still better than writing prose.

Doyoon tore out the last page of his notebook, then painstakingly wrote out the solution process in his crooked handwriting. Then, this time, they both exclaimed, “Whoa.”

“This is crazy amazing, isn’t it?”

“The answer came out first. That means he did all of this in his head.”

“Didn’t he solve it in, like, one second?”

The two boys did not keep their promise. They pushed other test papers at him, insisting he solve more, and every time Doyoon wrote an answer, they made strange noises and laughed among themselves, disappearing only after Jaehyun suddenly appeared and chided them. Only after hearing him nag, “Stop making him do math, he needs to study Korean.”

The next day, Wednesday. The daily routine at school passed without incident. After school, Doyoon stopped by Jaehyun’s place to study.

It was the last study session before the finals. Jaehyun said he also had to do his own studying over the weekend.

“Let’s think of today as the day we perfectly finish reviewing our memorization for Korean, English, Social Studies, and Science. Let’s start with a quiz.”

As soon as Jaehyun sat down, he took out his notebook. Time passed even more densely than usual. After getting a score close to 90 on the random quiz and finishing a total review of the problems he got wrong by type, Doyoon got up from the dining table.

“Bye.”

Jaehyun saw him off to the shoe rack and said goodbye from behind him.

That was it. He did not say, ‘See you at school tomorrow’. Doyoon was conscious of that blank space, and though he hesitated, he soon decided to fill it in. Because he had a faint inkling. That this was a problem.

It was a similar situation to when Jaehyun had mouthed ‘You say it’ in front of Woo Jincheol. He had given the wrong answer then. Now he knew what the correct answer was. The answer that would not make Jaehyun angry. Doyoon took a short breath, and then spat out the words as if blowing it all out.

“Goodbye. See you at school tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

Jaehyun’s eyes widened, then he smiled so brightly that they closed up again as he responded.

“Good. Well done. See you tomorrow.”

The next day, Thursday, quite a few kids came and went around Doyoon’s desk.

First, Jaehyun stopped by to say hello after homeroom. When Doyoon greeted him back, he asked some questions about the weather and such, and after getting a few answers, he smiled and returned to his seat.

During the next break, two boys came to see him. They were the ones who had brought the math problems the day before. Even after seeing Doyoon’s earmuffs, they did not back down, hanging around in front of him saying, “Hey, can’t you hear me? You can hear, right?” and when there was no reaction, they shut their mouths and started watching Doyoon solve Korean problems, making comments to each other.

In the middle of that, a girl said, “Move,” and plopped down in the seat in front of Doyoon. It was the girl who had drawn a cat in the corner of Doyoon’s notebook on Monday.

“Hi.”

The girl grinned, and her eyes widened when she saw Doyoon’s worksheet.

“Wow, your handwriting is really something.”

“……”

“First time seeing it. At this point, it’s not even a worm. It’s like a… tapeworm.”

Hearing that, the boys turned their heads and made a deflating sound. Doyoon pretended not to notice and continued to scribble his pencil on the worksheet, but his face grew hot. The girl, a bit sheepishly, said, “Hey, I’m not teasing you,” and then started drawing things that were either worms or tapeworms in the upper part of the test paper.

She drew about ten very small, squiggly creatures in a line like a row of text, then added a speech bubble on one side and wrote, ‘We may be ugly, but we’ll do our best! Fighting!’ And then, when the bell for class rang, she went back to her seat.

Doyoon occasionally checked Jincheol’s and Jaehyun’s seats with his eyes. Jincheol was mostly alone or only talked with the class president, and Jaehyun mostly chatted with a boy named Yang Juhwan in the front seat. They played separately in pairs like that, and the four of them did not hang out together again like before.

Friday, the last day of the week before the exams. During the break after the 5th period, the girl with the curly hair came again. She waved her hand at the kid sitting perfectly fine in the front seat to tell him to move, then plopped down in that seat herself and looked back. Then she placed the tip of her pen on the corner of the workbook Doyoon was reviewing and started drawing something.

[Good luck on the exam]

Next to it, a four-leaf clover was drawn. Looking at the clover, Doyoon’s eyes inadvertently shifted to the school uniform shirt the girl was wearing. Baek Yeji.

A green name tag was pinned on the pocket over her chest. After finishing the last leaf of the clover, making it plump, Yeji stood up, and Doyoon, with one fist clenched tightly under the desk, looked up and said.

“Thank you.”

A shrill sound came out.

The girl’s eyes widened as she turned back, and then she burst out laughing, saying he looked just like a tomato. Then, seeing Doyoon’s expression, she stopped abruptly, put on a serious face, and added that it was absolutely not an insult. Because tomatoes are very delicious and highly nutritious vegetables.

“See you again!”

Yeji waved and left. Doyoon stared blankly at her retreating back, then lowered his head back towards the workbook.

The weekend passed and the first day of exams, Monday, dawned. After finishing the morning dishes, Doyoon turned around and his gaze stopped on the dining table. A single madeleine, wrapped in packaging, was sitting there. In front of the spot where Doyoon usually sat to eat.

Did his sister take it out to eat in her room and forget it? It seemed Eunseo liked the madeleines Jaehyun had brought. Because it looked like she took one to eat every day. Doyoon picked up the madeleine and turned to put it back in the cupboard. Just then, a scowling voice flew at him.

“What, why are you putting it back?”

When he turned around, Eunseo was standing there. Her hair was wet, as if she was on her way out of the bathroom. Doyoon explained.

“It was out, so I’m putting it back where it belongs.”

“Are you an idiot… I put it out on purpose.”

Eunseo said with the deepest frown she could manage.

“I put it out for oppa to eat. I left it at your spot, and you couldn’t figure that out?”

“Oh… No, you eat it all.”

“Am I a pig, to eat someone else’s gift all by myself?”

Eunseo’s face scrunched up so much that several wrinkles formed between her eyebrows.

“It’s an exam day, so you’ll be using your brain a lot. Take it and eat it during break time. I left a few more, so keep doing that during the exam period. They say a lot of kids mess up their exams because their sugar is low.”

“Okay, I got it.”

“Seriously…”

Grumbling, Eunseo went into her room.

It’s been a while, Doyoon thought.

We talked a lot. It had been a really long time since he had a long conversation with his sister. Doyoon clutched the packaged madeleine tightly, went into his room, and put it in the front pocket of his backpack. After checking the writing utensils and key summary notes in his bag, he let out a short breath and left the room. His father had left for work in the early morning, so there was no need to say goodbye.

Doyoon locked the front door with his key and walked out to the main entrance of Building 3. The smell of garbage and filth in the hallway receded, and soon the scent of trees wafted in. The old trees of the old apartment complex, their green leaves flourishing like clouds, their crowns soaring surprisingly high.

The leaves cast layered shadows on the mosaic tiles of the sidewalk. When the wind blew, they swayed differently on his face, on his shoulders, and under his feet, plunging his whole body deep into an ocean made of summer weather.

It’s okay, Doyoon thought.

Of course, something bad will happen soon. Because there’s no way this daily life will continue.

It is just a brief, coincidental peace. More accurately, it is just a shell that looks like peace. I must not be mistaken. It is natural to assume that just as it was shattered before, it will be shattered this time as well. His sister still despises him. The kids in the classroom surely despise Doyoon too. Jaehyun was special, but there was no way that even the other kids could treat him normally.

The very strange, hard-to-understand attitudes of a few kids right now will also change clearly before long. They will end up revealing their contempt for Doyoon. They will end up laughing at, mocking, and hitting him.

But for now, let’s be deceived. Doyoon looked up at the leaves stained by the sunlight, then lowered his gaze back to his feet and mulled it over. I believed it because I needed to. Because today is an exam day.

To do well on the exam, it is better to have a peaceful mind, so let’s pretend to believe. Let’s delude myself into thinking that everything is actually okay. Right before entering the classroom, Doyoon took a deep breath in and out to calm his mind. Only after that did he enter and look at the whiteboard at the front.

In black letters on the whiteboard, it was written in large print [200X 1st Year Final Exams / Day 1: 09:00~12:15]. 1st period Korean, 2nd period Common Mathematics, 3rd period Technology and Home Economics. Before the bell signaling the start of the exam rang, Doyoon closed his eyes.

He was trying to use the method he had learned. Jaehyun had said so. Before taking an exam, close your eyes and think of the place you want to be right now.

<The reason your math score was bad during the midterms, I think it’s a mentality issue.>

Jaehyun had told him to think of the place where he usually studied best or a place where he felt at ease. To imagine that he was there right now. He said that if he solved the problems like that, he would feel a bit more relaxed. Doyoon mentally pictured the study place.

The living room of Jaehyun’s studio apartment. The light-colored wooden dining table. He could always study well there, and he could solve problems much better than when he was solving them alone. Straightening his back into the same posture he had when sitting in the chair at the dining table, Doyoon tried to enter the imagination.

<Let’s think of today as the day we perfectly finish reviewing our memorization for Korean, English, and Social Studies.>

But a voice intruded, shaking the outlines of the objects. Let’s start with a quiz, Jaehyun says as he picks up his summary notebook. The moment his eyes fell on those fingers, the dining table disappeared from Doyoon’s mind, and instead, the scenery from the classroom window came to mind.

<Why do you keep touching someone else’s head? It’s unpleasant.>

The fingers that had cupped his temple.

The space changes again. This time, it’s a room with a closed door, a bus stop, the alleyway leading to the studio apartment. Then it blurs and collapses, losing all meaning. The walls, floor, and objects disappear, and instead, only voices, expressions, and movements fill his mind. Like a portrait that erases the background in darkness and brightly illuminates only one person in the foreground.

<Have you ever played the piano? What pieces have you learned up to?>

<What I mean is, you’re not particularly weird or anything.>

<I thought maybe you drew it with a similar feeling. What do you think? Am I completely wrong…?>

<Kang Doyoon!>

The eyes that curved gently.

<Good. Well done. See you tomorrow.>

Doyoon’s eyes flew open.